C# Escape Sequence Listing

What is an escape sequence? Well, put simply, an escape sequence is a series of special characters which are interpreted by the compiler as a command. In other words, they suspend the normal processing to perform some special function.

In C#, escape sequences are represented by a ‘\’ (backslash) followed by a letter or a combination of digits.

The following table represents the most common escape sequences used in C#.

Escape Sequence	What it Represents
\’	Single Quotation Mark (character 39)
\”	Double Quotation Mark (character 34)
\?	Literal Question Mark
\\	Backslash (character 92)
\a	Alert/Bell (character 7)
\b	Backspace (character 8 )
\f	Formfeed (character 12)
\n	New Line (character 10)
\r	Carriage Return (character 13)
\t	Horizontal Tab (character 9)
\v	Vertical Tab (character 11)
\ooo	ASCII character in octal notation
\xhh	ASCII character in hexadecimal notation

Examples

1. In the below code we are escaping the backslash in the path string.

   string path = "C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft";

   The result would look like this: C:\Program Files\Microsoft

2. In the below code we are adding a carriage return and a new line by using the \r\n escape sequences together.

   MessageBox.Show("Hello from...\r\nhttps://www.daveoncsharp.com", 
                   "Escape Sequences", 
                   MessageBoxButtons.OK, 
                   MessageBoxIcon.Information);

   The result will be a message box with the message string split on two lines as shown below.

   

I hope you found this useful. Feel free to visit this blog often for more similar articles.

Dave.